Tag Archives: love

This is the last post in series about the lessons my husband (NT) and I (aspie) have learned during the 25 years we’ve been married.

Learn how to recognize your partner’s expressions of love

Aspies and NTs speak completely different languages when it comes to expressions of love. You can either learn to translate your partner’s “love language” or you can spend the rest of your marriage wondering if this person you’re sleeping next to every night really, actually loves you.

How does this translation work? Like this:

The Scientist: “You don’t have to make my lunch every morning. I can pick something up in the cafeteria.”

Me: “I don’t mind. It only takes a few minutes and I know you’d rather have something healthy to eat. This way you don’t have to waste time waiting in line.”

The Scientist: “So you mean you make my lunch because you care about me, right?”

Exactly.

Learning how to translate the ways your partner thinks about love and intimacy can be challenging in an aspie-NT relationship. Image via creative commons license from the Flickr photostream of DailyPic.

Accept that there are things you’ll never understand about your partner

No matter how long you live together or how much you love each other, there will be moments when you feel like your partner is the most incomprehensible person on Earth. The aspie and NT brains have key differences. The sooner you accept this, the less frustrated you’ll be when your partner does something that leaves you scratching your head.

There have been many times when The Scientist has given up on a conversation with the words, “I just don’t understand you.” It’s not that he isn’t trying. He’ll ask me lots of questions to try to zero in on an explanation for something I’ve done or said. He’ll wait semi-patiently while I sit mutely and stare off into the distance, unable to put words to what I’m feeling. He’ll repeat things back to me to see if he’s hearing me correctly. But no matter how many different ways I explain it, it still doesn’t make sense to him because we’re both starting from fundamentally different places.

This goes both ways. The day The Scientist told me that he feels something–a physical sensation of warmth was how he described it–when he says, “I love you” I was stunned. I tell him that I love him every day but I’ve never associated a physical feeling with those words.

I can logically understand what this physical feeling might be like, but I’ll probably never know exactly what he feels. By the same token, I can tell him that when I sit in a crowded restaurant, my brain is tracking the conversations at all of the tables within earshot, but I don’t think he can ever replicate that experience in his own head.

We can make educated guesses at what’s going on inside the head of our partner, but there will always be some experiences that we can’t truly understand.

Have realistic expectations but don’t stop trying to grow and improve your relationship.

When faced with the day-to-day challenges of an aspie-NT marriage, it would be easy for both partners to simply give up in frustration. I can think of plenty of times when walking away would have been easier and less painful than trying to work things out.

Balancing realistic expectations–by both partners–with a concerted effort to improve can be a relationship-saver. Realistic expectations go both ways. The NT partner shouldn’t expect the aspie partner to morph into a typical person overnight. (The Scientist says he wouldn’t want this even it were possible.)

By the same token, the aspie partner shouldn’t expect the NT partner to simply put up with an endless barrage of unchecked aspie behavior. Knowing what can be changed and what can be tolerated is essential.

The second part of this equation is one that might draw some heat from aspies. I’m a firm believer in trying to improve my ability to function in an NT world. Before anyone jumps down my throat about the potential evils of assimilating, let me explain.

The day I explained to my husband about my Asperger’s, one of the first things he said was, “I love you exactly the way you are.” I treasure that and I know it’s not something he said just to make me feel better. He means it. But I also know that I’m hard to live with. I find myself hard to live with at times. So when I say I want to improve my level of functioning, it’s because I want to struggle less on a daily basis and because I want the people around me–the people I love–to struggle less. It has nothing to do with conforming to the expectations of an NT world and everything to do with making life less stressful and more enjoyable for myself and my family.

Are aspies capable of love? Maybe it depends on how you look at it . . .

In the reimagined version of TV series Battlestar Galactica (yes, I’m a geek), two of the main characters have the following conversation:

Adama: Did you love her?
Tyrol: Thought I did.
Adama: Well, when you think you love somebody, you love them. That’s what love is. Thoughts…

If love is thoughts, then it’s the expression of those thoughts that separates aspies from neurotypical people. Aspies tend to express love through practical actions, whereas NTs are more likely to express love through words or symbolic actions.

What do I mean by practical versus symbolic actions? In The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome, Dr. Tony Attwood tells a story about a diagnostic interview question that he uses with young children. He asks the child what she would do if she came home to find that her mother was standing in the kitchen crying.

Neurotypical children will suggest solutions like giving their mother a hug (symbolic action) or asking her what’s wrong (love as words). Children with Asperger’s will suggest solutions like leaving her alone (being left alone is comforting for aspies) or bringing her a box of tissues (practical action). Continue reading That’s What Love Is. Thoughts . . .→

What People Are Reading

Yesterday I ventured way way way outside my comfort zone to record an interview on Autism Spectrum Radio. The host, Rob Haupt, asked some great questions and was easy to talk to. You can listen to our conversation here. Rob does a short intro and then the rest of show (about 35 minutes) is our conversation.

My friends Ibby Grace And Amy Sequenzia are editing an anthology titled “Typed Words, Loud Voices”, a collection of works by people who type to talk always or sometimes. They’re looking for essays, poems, stories or whatever form of expression you’d like to share your message in.

As some of you noticed yesterday, I’ve updated the blog theme to add a little color. Maybe down the road I’ll experiment with some of the new features (like this one that allows short “aside” posts). It’ll take some getting used to, I know.

And yes the remodeling is an indication of just how bored I am with all the not writing I’m doing.

Triathlon training is chugging along nicely – 3 weeks to go and I feel great, if a bit worn out. The garden is producing lots of cucumbers and tomatoes, a few eggplants and peppers. And for some reason I’m the only person on earth who can’t grown squash? With the exception of one green squash a couple of weeks ago, all I’m getting are tiny little squash that turn yellow and wither.

Besides a renewed obsession with The Sims, that’s about all that’s new around these parts.